OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

[Darksider]

Oh, McCain is now denouncing torture enhanced interrogation techniques?

Maybe he had a stroke and lost his memory from 2001 onwards.

[Skylon]

Oh, McCain is now denouncing torture enhanced interrogation techniques?

I always found it appalling that a man who had suffered permanent maiming from strappado failed to speak out strongly against mistreatment of prisoners under the Bush administration.

I thought he was fairly consistent on the torture thing.

Some examples:
A 2007 NYT article which notes his criticism of Rudy Giuliani's failure to call waterboarding torture: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/po ... f=politics

A 2006 interview on NBC in which he refers to it as a "breaching of conduct": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIHHZ59aWoA

In 2008 he told Bill O'Reilly that waterboarding has also given us "some very bad information": http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355197,00.html

I ceased to be a fan of McCain after he got the 2008 Republican nod, but this is one issue I don't recall him doing a 180 degree turn on, to fall in line with the hard right.

[Hawkwings]

My point is that if we're pointing to information acquired from a waterboarding 8 years ago as to the reason why something was successful today, I'm calling shens. There are ways to stressfully condition people for interrogation without resorting to torture, especially when the timeframe is stretching into years and years.

And I'm saying that the method by which we gained this information has nothing to do with the supposed 8 years that passed before these events occurred. You seem to think that we interrogated this guy for 8 long years before we got this name out of him, and you're criticizing waterboarding because it takes so long.

Forget any mention of waterboarding. My point is that it takes a lot of time to turn intelligence into actionable objectives, especially in this sort of hide-and-seek covert world. The vast majority of those 8 years were spent investigating this (and other) leads, piecing together more of the picture, gathering more intel and following leads, until finally we get to the compound.

[MKSheppard]

Link

Osama bin Laden had 500 Euros in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, CBS News has confirmed.

The news was first reported by Politico Wednesday. It was unclear whether the money was denominated in Euros or another currency, but the revelation seems to indicate that the al Qaeda leader was prepared to flee in the event of a raid like the U.S. military strike in which he was killed on Sunday.

The details come from officials who attended a classified intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill.

"CIA Director Leon Panetta told lawmakers about the items found in bin Laden's clothing in response to a question about why he wasn't guarded by more security personnel at his relatively luxurious home in a military town north of Islamabad," Politico reported. "The answer, according to one source who attended the briefing: Bin Laden believed "his network was strong enough he'd get a heads-up" before any U.S. strike against him."

[MKSheppard]

Hear about that new drink?

The Bin Laden: Two shots and a splash of water

[Thanas]

Oh, McCain is now denouncing torture enhanced interrogation techniques?

I always found it appalling that a man who had suffered permanent maiming from strappado failed to speak out strongly against mistreatment of prisoners under the Bush administration.

I thought he was fairly consistent on the torture thing.

Some examples:
A 2007 NYT article which notes his criticism of Rudy Giuliani's failure to call waterboarding torture: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/po ... f=politics

A 2006 interview on NBC in which he refers to it as a "breaching of conduct": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIHHZ59aWoA

In 2008 he told Bill O'Reilly that waterboarding has also given us "some very bad information": http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355197,00.html

I ceased to be a fan of McCain after he got the 2008 Republican nod, but this is one issue I don't recall him doing a 180 degree turn on, to fall in line with the hard right.

He was defending torture during the campaign, as has been pointed out many times directly on this board.

[Broomstick]

In a way, that made it even more distressing - he had spoken out against for years, as one would expect, then flip-flopped for the presidential campaign. It makes me physically nauseous to think about it.

[MKSheppard]

Apparently post-partisan bounce unity lasts about four days. This means that if we make first contact with aliens, Washington DC will be all super fun for only about eight days.

But anyway, some people are critical over Obama revealing we got him so early, so fast.

They argue that Obama should have held onto the information for about 24-48 hours, so we could roll up some networks based on the information we got.

The problem with the premise of holding onto the information long enough to recycle it into actionable intelligence to kill someone important is the fact that Pakistan plays both sides in the GWOT.

OBL was found hiding inside a safehouse about 800 metres from the grounds of the Pakistani Military Academy; and the safehouse was owned by Hizbul Mujahedeen.

If you've never heard of them, don't worry. Nobody really does, except for India.

Why?

Because the Hizbul Mujahedeen was created by the Pakistani ISI in 1989 to wage war on India inside Kashmir.

The Pakistani security forces secured the compound probably about 15-20 minutes after we lifted off.

They would have found:

• 20~ people all zip-tied in the middle of the compound or on the street, many of them OBL's relatives.
• 3-4~ people inside in pools of their own blood with known links to OBL.
• Low grade circumstantial evidence that OBL was staying there that we missed (with just 40 minutes, we couldn't take the place apart completely).
• A large pool of blood missing a body.

If the Pakistani security services were merely corrupt, the evidence that Bin Ladin was the target and that he was either seriously wounded or killed would leak relatively rapidly. Just look at how the Pakis already sold a bunch of holiday snaps of the dead guys to Reuters. Al Quaeda does monitor the internet, you know?

However, the fact that we found him in a compound owned by an ISI-created group moves them from the 'corrupt' category to the 'actively aiding' category.

Once it became obvious that the Emir was no longer amongst his fellows and had been removed by the Great Satan; elements within the ISI would have begun spreading the news amongst their own terror networks; and Al Quaeda would have gotten the message as well to go to ground and disperse.

Either way, I feel that sitting on the news would only have bought about 1-2 hours more of operationally valuable time to kill HVT's -- and that just isn't enough time for our guys to land and begin the initial task of sifting through the information we got.

[K. A. Pital]

It boggles the mind just how ironic the whole America-funding-Pakistan and the ISI creating and supporting the islamist movement is. The OBL business is just another chapter in the tale which is bound to continue. Maybe America invaded the wrong nation (but then again, no matter how much the ISI helps Mohammad Jihad warriors against Great Satan, America will never invade due to Pakistan having nuclear weapons).

[MKSheppard]

It boggles the mind just how ironic the whole America-funding-Pakistan and the ISI creating and supporting the islamist movement is.

Hopefully, we find copious correspondence between a four-star equivalent in the ISID and OBL.

Other than that....

[Sea Skimmer]

Pakistan has some moderates; the idea of aid is to give them something to go to other people in Pakistan and say ‘look, this is a reason to support the US’ in cold hard terms. No aid and those people loose even more ground. The fact is if Pakistan was really that heavily against NATO, then no way could the NATO supply line be kept open without NATO troops guarding it. For every truck that does get attacked a hundred plus get through. It wouldn't be hard at all for popular resistance to put a stop to that. I expect aid to be cut way back, but not halted.

After all, it’s not like the large urban populations in Pakistan have anything to gain from the Taliban taking over the mountains and spreading Jihad to the cities. These endless suicide bombings are not the most brilliant tactic the Taliban could be using. Iraq already showed that enough suicide bombings will just make people the US was killing the day before turn around and ally with the US if it goes on long enough. All that said I fully expect and think US aid should be greatly reduced. Even if we very optimistically assume people at the very top of the Pak government aren’t in on this bullshit, they obviously aren’t doing enough to control the people under them.

[K. A. Pital]

Iraq already showed that enough suicide bombings will just make people the US was killing the day before turn around and ally with the US if it goes on long enough.

This took half a decade to accomplish, and the US started actually building stuff and electrifying Iraq's cities to make life less of a hell (Pakistan's progress in electrification and more mundane, urban industrialization has been modest to say the least, and the recent flood dealt damage that is still not well estimated or understood), the US worked on restoring power to greater levels seen under late Saddam and possibly over the 1991 levels. Iraq was much more secularized - even anti-Saddam forces, like the Kurds, were largely a secular group. Religion is a much bigger factor in Pakistan, I think, and their industrial backwardness is more striking.

[MKSheppard]

Four Oddities

Mysteriously, census takers apparently avoided Osama bin Laden's compound. Painted on the entrance gate to most homes in the neighborhood – but not at Osama bin Laden's compound – was a note in Urdu saying that census enumerators had visited over the past two months. Houses that participate in the census have to give details about everyone who lives there.

[Edward Yee]

One explanation I've heard -- intimidate the neighbors into silence by pretending to be drug dealers, believe it or not.

[Phantasee]

Just look at how the Pakis already sold a bunch of holiday snaps of the dead guys to Reuters.

Didn't we just go over this with Bottlestein? "Paki" is a well-known racial slur. I object to your use of it to describe individuals from or in Pakistan.

[Pelranius]

Aren't the Chinese investing in Pakistan? That should help with the economic situation there a little bit (though a lot of projects like the Gwadar port don't seem to have gone anywhere).

Maybe the Taliban will step up attacks in Pakistan, which could (operative word) start some sort of Awakening backlash. Though I don't know if the TTP has the capacity for such an uptick in attacks.

[MKSheppard]

Didn't we just go over this with Bottlestein?

I haven't been on the board much lately, so I missed that.

"Paki" is a well-known racial slur. I object to your use of it to describe individuals from or in Pakistan.

It is? You learn something new each day. It was just quicker for me to write than "Pakistanis"; but I will use the long form here in the future.

[Phantasee]

Thank you.

[MKSheppard]

Again from Reddy on TANKNET:

A well known and well connected Pakistani journalist, Najam Sethi, said yesterday that Gen. Kayani, the ISI chief and Zardari received simultaneous calls from US officials immediately after the raid was launched and were told that the US has started an operation against a high value target and asked Pakistan to stand down. It was only after the SEAL team and El Jefe's body were safely in Afghan airspace that the Pakistanis were told that the target was Bin Laden. Sethi also said that in the weeks leading up to this, US officials talked to the Pakistanis about everything but the Bin Laden trail.

The US basically did a fait accompli.

[edited a bit]

[Sea Skimmer]

Aren't the Chinese investing in Pakistan? That should help with the economic situation there a little bit (though a lot of projects like the Gwadar port don't seem to have gone anywhere).

That's gone somewhere, the port has a breakwater, quay wall and cranes now at what used to be a rock rubble shoreline.


Its not the most lavish port you can dream up, but it can take 37ft draft ocean going ships now and thus easily embark the Red Chinese Mid Eastern Invasion Forces that drive over the Karakoram Highway to take the world by surprise. In terms of commercial traffic it will take a while to develop anything because the road and rail infrastructure in that part of Pakistan sucks. Its only hope is the simple fact that Karachi is massively overcrowded.

The port has several more phases to go, I have no idea if they have a timeframe for that or wait and see.

[Havok]

Thank you.

Paki isn't a racial slur because Pakistan isn't a race. Pakistan the name is just an acronym representing the different actual races that live there. I forget them all. It's been a while since my buddy who was from Pakistan told me about that.

[Metahive]

Since when have such details ever mattered to racists? There's a slew of different dark-skinned african ethnicities out there, but they're "niggers" all the same for the racists.

[Zed]

There are a few Dutch people who've tried to report Osama Bin Laden's killing to the police as a murder. They're considering approaching the ICC.

[mr friendly guy]

Thank you.

Paki isn't a racial slur because Pakistan isn't a race. Pakistan the name is just an acronym representing the different actual races that live there. I forget them all. It's been a while since my buddy who was from Pakistan told me about that.

Paki however is used as a slur in various places, and frankly if it used to cover all ethnicities living in Pakistan then frankly it becomes a racial slur, just not specific. Given that the Ni**er is used as a slur against black people when dark skin people themselves are comprised of different ethnic groups I find the distinction you put to be trivial at best.

Just for the record Paki is used as a racial slur in UK. Just watch news reports of right wing marches and the BNP supporters. Also in Australia the average person might not be aware of it used in that fashion per se, however if our cricket commentators can point that out then hell yeah its not exactly unhead of to be used as a slur.

[Broomstick]

But anyway, some people are critical over Obama revealing we got him so early, so fast.

They argue that Obama should have held onto the information for about 24-48 hours, so we could roll up some networks based on the information we got.

The problem with the premise of holding onto the information long enough to recycle it into actionable intelligence to kill someone important is the fact that Pakistan plays both sides in the GWOT.

You forgot to mention that a neighbor had already tweeted about the raid to the internet - there was no way it was going to stay secret even a day.